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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29273436">in plain sight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/labime/pseuds/labime'>labime</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Human/Vampire Relationship, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Non-Linear Narrative, Power Imbalance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:41:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,875</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29273436</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/labime/pseuds/labime</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Something was off. No one reacts that way to murder.</p><p>or: Mary-Alice Brandon kills her father and runs away from more than she bargained for.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, Mary-Alice Brandon/Jasper Whitlock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Jalice Week - February 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>in plain sight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>so this is my participation to jalice week—posted one day too late but better late than never i guess</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The kitchen is a fog of tea-scented smoke as the kettle hisses a shrill sound.</p><p>Her dad had already put it on to heat when she came running across the stars, crying and begging, red-faced, hiccuping and he'd frowned and asked what was wrong with exhausted exasperation at yet another of her hysterical fits.</p><p>She'd cried harder. And then she asked about her mom and she saw the shimmer of fear, the way his eyes widened in horrified surprise and then hardened before he snapped, defensive and harsh in a way that made her want to shrink back and cower, make herself smaller and bury herself in a corner to wait it out—like watching something from another place, happening to someone else, like she always did when he got like that—as he screamed back, louder than her, his booming voice drowning out her wails and her accusations and the kettle.</p><p>But she'd seen what he'd done and she stood her ground, called him names and said she'd go to the police, and then his voice had faded with anger, spittle splattered onto her cheeks as he sputtered that no one would believe her, that he'd send her back there, to<em> that place</em>, commit her for a few years and, calmer then, finally, at her fear-riddled expression, quieting voice, morphing face into malleable resignation, the telltale signs of the returning order he was accustomed to.</p><p>He'd gathered himself and straightened his spine, looked with something like pity, like guilt maybe, and that was how Mary-Alice knew he would absolutely do what he threatened her with. Her father is a man of few words and certainly not lenient with his daughters, or his wife, and then—</p><p>There's blood everywhere, sprouting up her face and pouring into her hand, her right one, holding the knife, knuckles white and rigid underneath crimson, thrusting down into viscous flesh and sinews.</p><p>Everything tangles between her fingers, something slippery glides between them, her hand jerking up and down, still chopping away, the knife angled differently now, like a guillotine. She cries that she hates him and that she's sorry and that she hates him. She hiccups a sob. It strangles her.</p><p>Her hand flies to her own throat as if she can't breathe and she really can't breathe, chokes for air just as her dad chokes on the tiled floor, blood gushing from the frenzied wounds, in his neck. It doesn't look like a neck now. There is more coming out and she yelps, palms open. She throws it way. She doesn't know what it is but she is sure she carved off a big chunk of some vital organ and it makes her cries harder and cleaves harder until the knife slips through her fingers, wet.</p><p>She recoils, tries to stand up, falls, feet skidding into the cooling blood, and she thinks, <em>I didn't know there could so much blood</em>, and her knees hurt now and she still can't breathe. She can no longer look at her father and his wide-eyed stare that look at the ceiling, at nothing. His head is held to his once-bulky neck with a single, frail thread of flesh. Everything is torn up like crumpled paper from his chin down to that thread and, finally—finally, she screams.</p><p>The kettle is still hissing, the rose-gold topping for Cynthia's birthday cake dribbling onto the kitchen table, molten sugar boiling in the pan. Her mother would be disappointed. She used to bake for Cynthia's birthday. She used to keep the kitchen clean.</p><p>
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</p><p>He finds her on her knees and when he comes rushing to her with a slowness that looks too controlled, she doesn't think anything of it. Maybe he thinks she will attack him too and he doesn't want to risk it.</p><p>She doesn't think he will help. She doesn't understand why he does.</p><p>This is what happens—</p><p>(She blinks several times and everything rearranges in her memory in fragments.)</p><p>—It happens like that. She, on her knees, trembling, soaked in crusting blood, raises her head and peers up at him, expects something and she doesn't know what—he tells her, later, once her eyes are freshly red and he can’t look at her, that she looked helpless but hopeful—he, suspiciously calm, walks into kitchent, the slaughterhouse, and kneels and takes her in his arms and Mary-Alice disappears.</p><p>
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</p><p>She let him pack for her and carry her clothes-stuffed bags into his trunk and carry her to her seat, too, like a child. She didn't try to talk, to ask. She couldn't find it in herself to quite determine what to say about what happened and what would happen next, and asking questions might lead him to second guess himself and call the police and she doesn't know what will happen to her but she does know she doesn't want to go to prison, or worse.</p><p>She remembers a mouthful of pills shoved past her lips and medicine pumped into her, IV line stuck into her arm, and not knowing where she was or why and what was her name.</p><p>She remembers the hospital staff laughing at her dewy-eyed distress, asking her to do tricks, snickering at her meek threats that she would tell on them, pinching her cheeks and neck while she was in a straitjacket, making her eat food she hated and made her sick, taunting her with her information found into her medical records and photos stored in her phone for them to see, refusing to turn around when she changed. Every humiliation had taken its toll on her, harsher than the physical pain. By the end of it, she didn't feel like a person.</p><p>The memory is a shock that makes her sit upright. She looks around through the black tinted windows at the blurring city lights behind them, and then the car is going faster, breaking the speed limit. Road signs, asphalt, gas stations come in flashes and vanish and then there are dusty roads and it's no longer dark out. She doesn't know how long they've been on the road.</p><p>She decides she will jump out of the car if he changes his mind. She won't go back there. Her hasty movement got her feeling dizzy and she lets her head drop back against the headrest, eyes screwed shut, panting. She hasn't taken her medicine since—</p><p>She realizes he is surveying her with persistent diligence, saying nothing. His head snapped up when she moved after hours of lethargic, uninterrupted stillness, but he hasn't asked her anything. He hasn't said much since he buckled her seat-belt and started the car.</p><p>He took her to the bathroom before, had asked, several times, what happened as he checked for injuries. When he found nothing he peeled her clothes off and scrubbed her skin with quick efficiency.</p><p><em>Mary-Alice</em>, he said, in that calming voice of his, <em>what happened?</em> And she heard him and she thought, <em>W</em><em>hat happened?</em>  She knew why she did it but she couldn't summon up the sequence of action that started what he walked into. The knife was sitting next to the bread basket and butter, the blade glinting. She looked at it, thought, <em>That's not the bread knife</em>, and, then, what happened?</p><p>(Did she make a run for it? Did she grab it? Did her dad suspect what she was going to do, did he try to stop her? When did she decide she would stab him? When she did, did he stagger back? In anger, in disbelief? Did she stop, even just a second, to contemplate what she was doing?)</p><p><em>(Mary-Alice</em>, <em>what happened?)</em></p><p>She was clueless.</p><p>She wanted to tell him that but her lips were unresponsive, her vocal cords squeezing out air when she tried to form the beginning of a sentence. <em>I</em>—she started, several times, but her voice tapered off.</p><p>It wasn't the first time that happened, the pitch-black memory loss. Last time, she was sent off to that hospital. As if he sensed the rush of underlying panic in her, Jasper hadn't asked anything else. It made her uneasy. Something was off. No one reacts that way to murder.</p><p>He worked on rubbing stains off her and dressing her in clean clothes, her limbs pliant. She felt warm and relaxed and she would have fallen asleep right then and there if it wasn't for her dad's face wavering in front of her darkening eyelids when she tried to doze off. She would have liked to pretend that day was a nightmare. Jasper whispered something, breaths fanning against her neck, and she relaxed.</p><p>He's talking on the phone now. His is voice is too low and lips are moving too fast or she's too slow but she can't make out what he's saying. He doesn't seem happy with whoever he is talking to.</p><p>He glances at her, now and then, worried, his attention matching a surging panic, a burgeoning memory, something awful she doesn't want to recall, and a lulling bliss spills into her and dulls everything else.</p><p>He says he is sorry, just before she does fall asleep. She assumes he is trying to be apologetic but he looks like a naughty boy with his sheepish guilt and tumbling curls and she raises her hand in an interrupted motion to pull a curl back. She doesn't know what he is sorry about but she is sure it is not worth it. <em>I never used my gift like that, not with you.</em></p><p> </p><p>
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</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He is putting gas in his car when she wakes up, startled. She nearly screams, eyes flitting to the unfamiliar surroundings and voices. It's dark again and she doesn't know how long she's been sleeping.</p><p>Her fingers dig into the dark leather seat, eyes wild, hurt. She can't imagine he's going to stick around for much longer. Maybe he is going to dump her to the roadside and drives on, call it a day. She couldn't blame him for that.</p><p>Her step-mom, like her proverbial epithet, has surely discovered the body and called the police and they must have noticed she's missing by now, hasn't shown up to classes, doesn't answer her phone, left in a hurry, taking only cash and clothes, her phone ditched on the outskirts of Biloxi. They know. If they find her, they will be able to prove she did it.</p><p>She left fingertips all over the floor, the knife. Someone has probably issued a warrant and they will be perusing over her medical records, terms coming up again and again, incriminating her. Her neighbors back home will all tell them the same thing; she lost her mom and she lost it, got violent.</p><p>She wonders if that's what they will tell Cynthia. They can't tell her now, Mary-Alice thinks, agitated, fear stirring slowly. There will be someone to oversee things, some social worker called to deal with trauma or custody. They will tell her later, when she will be older, and she will hate Mary-Alice for taking their dad away.</p><p><em>Killing</em> him.</p><p>She tries to use the word in her head but it is too unforgiving, a judgment in that silent word she whirls over in her head, trying to sugarcoat it.</p><p>She fumbles with the passenger side window switch and counts backward from sixty to one as she gulps in the Mississippi summer air, humid and potent.</p><p>It gets to her, knowing that Cynthia will hate her, that she growing up she will forget dance classes, ballet shoes, Saturday nights eating junk food and watching movies and cuddling with her when she was scared at night. She will remember her with the frozen inaccuracy of rage and grief.</p><p>Yet, Mary-Alice still can't bring herself to regret the blood and the wounds even as she thinks she will burn with the consequences of what she's done.</p><p>He killed her mom.</p><p>He and his mistress got someone to do it and masqueraded it as an accident. An animal attack, coyotes, there would be an open casket funeral. Mary-Alice blinking, standing with Cynthia’s little hand in hers, and not crying. Whatever she had been given to calm her and get into the black dress she wore last when Grandpa Brandon died kicked in, and she'd only looked on as it was her turn to loom up over her mom's dead face painted in all the wrong shades, an unsettling difference. <em>This is her but this also isn't her</em>, she thought.</p><p>She had seen that happening, she could have stopped that, but she didn't. She told her dad, her first mistake, and then there were shouting matches and she was locked in her bedroom. Her foothold slipped for the first of many times and she was standing in her bedroom, hitting her head against the wall again and again, the pain barely registering, eyes rolling. Qomething cracked, her skull, her sister calling out to her from the other side of the door. The hospital, the abuse, the scars—</p><p>"Breath," Jasper says. "Slowly," he adds, frowning, but she can't.</p><p>He seems to consider something but then he shakes his head and slides into the car with her. He tucks her against his side, hands her a paper bag and waits for it to pass. He never saw her like that. That's what she liked about him—about everything after leaving Biloxi—he didn't know something was wrong with her. Now he has. Maybe he can see her rotting quietly in her own flesh and he will turn around before he can get in trouble. He has already gotten her this far, it's more than she deserves.</p><p>The convenience store is bathed in light, blue and too bright. She peers up at a man smoking through the store window, wiping a hand over his sweaty forehead, reading some sports magazine. He will smoke a cigarette before closing, he will not put it out properly. She glares away.</p><p>She glances up at Jasper, squints. His eyes are darker, not the muddy brown she can recognize, and gleam fiercely, hard and unblinking, as if he's expecting something, challenging her. She doesn't understand what it is he wants. He sighs and she feels like he's disappointed somehow. She disentangles from him.</p><p>He tells her they will find a motel and she will be sleeping in a bed tonight when she wriggles, her back and her neck aching.</p><p>"I've sleep already," she says.</p><p>She doesn't want to be a burden and she doesn't want to get her hopes up either. She still doesn't know where they are headed or what's the plan if there is one. She breathes low, her legs dangling, feet not touching the floorboard as he drives off.</p><p>"Your car is roomy. I will be fine."</p><p>She is stalling, can see his frustration tightening his grip around the handlebar, but she can't bring herself to answer the questions crowding the space, instead she fill it with her voice, with nonsense. For some reason, he puts up with it. When she runs out of things to speak about, he turns to her, says, "We still need to make a stop on our way."</p><p>A headache flares at the back of her head. She shrugs off the images flicking back and forth, a pyre, a forest, amber eyes, pain, so much pain, something burning up into someone, not fire, deeper, into her bloodstream.</p><p>That isn't real.</p><p>"On our way to go <em>where</em> exactly?"</p><p>
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</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They check-in at a remote motel that smells of beers and disinfectant spray. The clerk slides over the keys to their bedroom and eyes her, mildly curious. She cringes a little bit at that. She hadn't paid attention to the clothes Jasper choose for her. She looks down at her dirty bare feet, striped tank top and pajama shorts and smooths over the material.</p><p>She feels gross after days on the road spent wearing those, going without showering or combing her hair, she would have freaked out at being seen like that just a few days ago. She misses the frivolity. She wishes she'd never come back to her hometown.</p><p>"We will stay here for a few days. We will head north as soon as we can," Jasper tells her, coming out of the bathroom with now-empty plastic bags.</p><p>She peeks into the bathroom. There are scissors and a bottle of hair dye on the sink.</p><p>North. Seattle. J. Jenks. Forged papers. New identity.</p><p>He knows that kind of people apparently. She doesn't get why a college student majoring in philosophy would know those people.</p><p>She blinks.</p><p>He tracks her gaze, tilts his head.</p><p>"You're too recognizable like that," he answers to something she wouldn't have asked. "Your mother filed a missing person's report. The local news didn't say anything about you being a suspect but they might be biding their time. It's possible that they hope you will get in touch with someone if you don't know they are after you."</p><p>Mary-Alice waits for the news to wash over her. "Step-mom," she says. "She is not my mom."</p><p>He frowns, a hint of perplexity across his face, and leaves when she says nothing else. She guesses he expected another panic attack, or tears, or guilt. She is tethered close to that point but she can hold on for a little longer.</p><p>She cuts her hair, doesn't bother with its uneven length, the thought that she should only occurring to her when it's already too short. She soaks up in the remnants of her lethargy as she sees it all fall down, her long locks—that her mother used to comb carefully when she was younger—falling into the sink.</p><p>She applies the hair dye next, the air reeking of chemicals that burns her eyes.</p><p>She goes through her things, picks something, bolts into the shower, cries, because the last time she was dripping blood all over the tiled walls, sobs until the water run cold and she has to make the better of it.</p><p>She rinses the hair dye until only clear water spins down the drain.</p><p>(At home, her father's—</p><p>Jasper put her in the bathtub—it had taken much longer for the water to run clear again.)</p><p>She washes off the grime and sweat and doesn't feel clean when she gets out, watches into the murky mirror, her bones biting out, her cheekbones sticking, pale face and pale lips and remembers the packaged food Jasper bought her, different sandwiches like he didn't know what to choose and how much she was going to eat.</p><p>She drags her feet to the bed and lies on the side, a towel wrapped around her. She eats, lumps of food slithering uncomfortably down her throat, thinks about pulsing arteries against her fingers, almost throw up, eats some more, lies down, looks at the ceiling fans, flies buzzing around it.</p><p>He comes back, his steps faltering, takes in the red of hair, her tears-streaked cheeks, her state of undress, her vacant eyes. He kisses her forehead and she wonders why. She should be happy he's even willing to but he shouldn't be unbothered.</p><p>There has been a strange familiarity to everything he did up until now. He was her boyfriend—charming, gentlemanly, <em>perfect</em>—she was taking home for her sister's birthday and meeting her dad for the first time.</p><p>(And then he was something else, methodical and stern, talking only when he needed to, motionless for hours, not eating or sleeping.)</p><p>He was from Houston, Texas. He had no siblings. He rented a small, one-bedroom apartment. He liked Kant, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Voltaire, and Socrates' works, particularly. He liked to talk about it over dinner. He—</p><p>She doesn't know anything else about him.</p><p>He knew exactly where to go, who to call, how to disappear, hadn't panicked when he found her, didn't flinch at the blood, the stench of decomposition.</p><p>
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</p><p>"You're not who I thought you were."</p><p>Once she says it she can't take it back.</p><p>It's distinctively underwhelming, saying it.</p><p><em>You're not who I thought you were</em>, she says, to her fake high school friends, a milkshake shaking in her hands, her lower lips quivering, strawberry bitter in her mouth, a side effect of the medecine, not the worst. They wouldn't talk to her when she called and didn't tell her they had plans when she asked and just wouldn't acknowledge her presence at the movie theater, giggling and slurping noisily, throwing glances at her across a row of uncomfortable seats.</p><p><em>You're not who I thought you were</em>, she says, naked, looking up at the guy half-passed out on the sofa and looking for her clothes, her thighs sore, when he tells her to get the fuck out of his dorm room. She'd been drunk, she'd been dumb, she'd been desperate to know what it was all about. Sex. After only hearing about it from books and TV and her friends. She skipped several years of her life and wanted to catch it all up, as if experiencing all she couldn't when she was locked up was going to roll back time so that she didn't lose anything.</p><p><em>You're not who I thought you were</em>, she says, to her father, when something finally dislodges in her mind, out of nowhere, and she sees something she already has but forgot in the fog of her lost years. Him, talking to a plain man about wages and prices, discussing how her mother is going to die, his mistress sitting close to him, her hand on his bent elbow, as though in support, while two men argue back and forth.</p><p>"You're not who I thought you were," she says to the man she loves and is something monstrous she hasn't foreseen. The words are too simple, both apt and wildly inappropriate.</p><p>
  <em>You betrayed me, you betrayed the person I thought you were.</em>
</p><p>She can't even mutter it. That would be true and that would reveal too much.</p><p>Red swallows brown over mere minutes and she stares forward into the welling color, its hues and layers, until she only sees carmine. He realizes too late what happened. Something must have betrayed her, because she kept her face blank, the rise and fall of her chest steady. She only stared, playing dead.</p><p>
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</p><p>(She meets him at a frat party.</p><p>She doesn't understand what he's doing here because he isn't dancing or flirting, or drinking. He doesn't seem to enjoy himself, either. He stays relatively on the fringes of the party, barely talking to anyone, mostly reading his book and checking his phone, and she buries her smile into her plastic cup, observes him above the rim. He is the pompous kind, she decides, the alcohol she shouldn't drink burning a path all the way to her empty stomach, making her bolder.</p><p>Moving away means there is no one breathing down her neck and bothering to check on her. It's liberating after being closely monitored every day, from early morning to bedtime, which she couldn't choose.</p><p>She flops down next to him with a drink and a grin and says he looks like he could use it even though his face really doesn't give anything away and he is fine with his book. He tosses it aside anyway and sips at his drink, wincing at the taste. She laughs, asks him questions about what he's reading, pretends not to understand the concepts so he has to explain, rests her head in her palm as she looks at his lips.</p><p>She waits out an acceptable amount of time before she starts flirting. She feels she might be coming on too strong because he looks surprised when she brushes fingers along his jawbone, frost grazing her fingertips, but then he is leaning into the touch, his face still unreadable, and she thinks maybe he likes to watch, and so she gives him a peep show, runs a hand across his shoulder, down his arm, makes sure if anyone was looking—or caring—her behavior would be ambivalently acceptable. Until her hand trails higher over his thigh.</p><p>He clutches her hand, eyes still fixed on her, not looking down when he stops her and leads her away, his grip bruising.</p><p>She lets him kiss her hard in her car, lick at her lips, her collarbones, his lips returning to her pulse point, feeling it beat, teeth close to nipping but <em>not</em>. She pants, cheeks flush with anticipation, guides his head and presses down in permission. He kisses her again instead, lips rough, breath cool, and her jaw aches. She throws one leg over his hips and straddles him, breathless.</p><p>She doesn't expect him to find him by her bed in the morning.)</p><p>
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</p><p>They are on the road again because he decided that the few days they were supposed to wait before moving were superfluous and she thinks he's lying and not even trying to hide it well because he looked at the mirror and swore something under his breath and looked ready for some reaction from her which never came.</p><p>He expected her to balk or scream. It's something she wanted to do, certainly, but her briefest vision yet stopped her short from doing that. He'd come out of the bathroom like her, pretending to be someone else, eyes brown again. He has been pretending for quite long and she's been spectacularly fooled. Whatever he is, it can't be human. She wonders how she couldn't have noticed something like that. Her abnormality pales in comparison to what she suspects he hides.</p><p>Her impatience quickly turns into hysteria when, true to his word at last, he finally gives her the answers he'd been withholding. She draws her knees up to her chest, glares forwards at the winding road and devolves into giggling and crying.</p><p>He is not making any sense.</p><p>He is talking about Texas and the Civil War, briefly, almost offhand, like he knows better than to pushes her tired mind to accept dates so removed from the present as a factor relevant to her life. He talks about vampires, southern wars, newborns, diet, traditional and vegetarian, an organization that sells its services to whoever is wealthy and reckless enough to dabble in a world that overlaps theirs and is likely to spit them out dead and drained, vampires again, and she can't believe she is hearing that word in a context that isn't theoretical, vampire covens, vampire law, Peter, Charlotte, Carlisle, Edward, Aro—</p><p>Everything dims into incomprehension.</p><p>The organization that has no name or written records is not a coven, he explains.</p><p>"It was the best option for me. The vegetarian diet was unbearable. I didn't want to kill anymore but there is no point in fighting your nature. It's natural to us to drink human blood as it is to humans to slaughter cattle and eat them. Most Southern Wars soldiers like me turned to that option—"</p><p>"You're fucking with me."</p><p>He <em>glares</em> at the interruption and she surmises she knows him enough to know her rudeness bothers him.</p><p>She clutches the moistening soda can she's gotten out of the cooler and hasn't yet drunk, the candy bar she bought from the ancient vending machine last time they stopped. She tosses both to the backseat, queasy.</p><p>Insofar, he held to his end of the bargain. He said he would tell her everything once they were alone and she agreed because what other choice did she have. What she suspected couldn't measure up to what he undisclosed.</p><p>"Stop the car," she blurts out, trying to give her voice that commanding edge she heard from other people. It comes out as a high-pitched plea. "I mean it, stop the car."</p><p>She yells it out when he doesn't comply and she feels like the car is folding on itself, about to crush her out. He remains collected until she hits his arm and tells him she fucking means it, sobbing and shaking her head no. Her heart constrict painfully in her chest as she catches on to what he said about selling their service to the wealthy—</p><p>Her dad asking a pale, dark-eyed man to <em>take care of his problem</em>, the fight she overheard, her mom slapping papers on a table and talking about a prenup and their assets, his mistress and that big diamond on her bony finger—</p><p>Jasper turns to her, looking undecided about something, calm covering her for a split second before receding all at once. He swiftly pulls over on the side of the road, jostling her, and parks the car. She finds no sense of relief in tears now. It's becoming a habit, like biting her cheek and tasting the sour, metallic tang.</p><p>"My mom," she starts, trails off cowardly, not yet ready to ask.</p><p>"She was killed by a hunter," he replies bluntly.</p><p>"A hunter," she repeats. "That means something different for you, doesn't it?"</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>Jasper is holding up a water bottle and aspirins as she slumps against the car. She swallows down, aware that he is refraining from telling her to eat only because he can feel how he repels her.</p><p>"James was quite skilled and in high demand back then. Your father tried to hire me but I wouldn't take that case. He must have known enough of our world to find someone else eventually."</p><p>
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</p><p>"Our kind is fundamentally nomadic," he says, "but it's changing."</p><p>She has the marked impression of listening to a folkloric bedtime story, the kind her mother would tell her at night before she went to sleep, the mellowed versions, Charles Perrault's fairytales, not Grimm's. He informs and she listens, wordless, fiddling with the hem of her shirt, not yet ready to accept what he says. What he says is that up until fairly recently, it was the norm, but that now vampires have decided to set down roots, some becoming involved in human affairs, some not. Those who did are a liability, but one too recurrent to risk alienating the vampire population.</p><p>"Money is one way, but it's not the only one. That is when the organization comes into play. It's more of a network, really, in that it has no hierarchy, policies, or army."</p><p>His friends, Peter and Charlotte, started it. They would do the job by themselves at first but it became unnecessary and they started handing out contracts to others and then recruiting to satisfy the demands of the market. Jasper says that they have had experience in that field from their years in the Southern Wars and Maria's army.</p><p>Mary-Alice wants to call him crazy, the bitter irony not lost on her, but she refrains because she actually believes him. He goes on and continues, a whisper of hesitation in his voice, that the payment is fluent.</p><p>"The hunt is half the fun for us but we know we can’t overeat and some prey are more desirable than others. A specific type of blood. Children in are notably prized, but their disappearances draw attention on a nation-wide extent, for that reason feeding from that age range is avoided."</p><p>His voice comes to a stop at the emotions he must feel coming off her, her horrified disgust for his world and for him too. He flinches, hands flexing and eyes distant again, probably setting up walls around himself. He manages to not sound affected in the least when he says his kind accept contracts only from the rich, the powerful, the elite, men and women who can sway and meddle in people's business, who can make death certificates disappear, change birth dates, close murder cases, silence journalists, talk magistrates into doing their bidding.</p><p>"Their involvement has become paramount, but has paradoxically exposed us more. The Volturi are not satisfied. They think we've come to rely too much on outside help. Peter's organization is a point of contention. It was allowed as long as they maintained secrecy but now it has run its course."</p><p>He talks about purges next, the Immortal Children who couldn't control their thirst, wolves—<em>werewolves</em>—shapeshifters, clans that broke the law. And now that organization. She hopes they are put down like dogs.</p><p>"You didn't meet me randomly, did you?"</p><p>"<em>You</em> approached me," he retorts, not bothering to deny it, and then, his face shifting into something she doesn't want to see, too soft, almost fragile, his features twisting into that look from early mornings he spent reading to her with her curled up against him. It's hesitant. "This—" He gestures between them. "—was not planned."</p><p>
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</p><p>"You knew what was going to happen," she accuses once she's out of breath, clinging to the argument, licking acid as she acknowledges it out loud. "You knew my mom was going to die. You didn't stop it."</p><p>Her nails are bitten through, skin both rough and soft around her fingertips, stitched together and welling. She scratches. The pain is distracting, welcome.</p><p>"You knew what was going to happen and you didn't do anything to stop that. You let my mom die."</p><p>It's deathly quiet, save for the roar of the car, the hum of the radio playing low, still turned on. Her grief settles her into hushing fatigue, her forehead against the glass of the window, her knees drawn up to her chest, arms holding them.</p><p>"I didn't know, therefore I didn't care," he says, a harsh honesty in his voice. "She was a name and a face in a file. I never even meet her. She was unimportant."</p><p>His profiled face is neutral, his voice cold given the context, a clinical military report, and withe-hot rage scorches her. <em>I want you dead</em>, she thinks.</p><p>"I meant no disrespect," he demurs. "If I had met you before, I would have stopped it. I would have protected her and you. I would—" He stalls, a hesitant intensity lingering, like he is choosing his words. She waits warily. "I would be anything for you," he says and must think it's love, that declaration.</p><p>It translates into something else; <em>I would let you do anything to me</em>. Maybe she thinks it's love too, but she is not ready to accept it from him.</p><p>
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</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She supposes he couldn't believe his luck when he found her while doing was he very candidly called <em>some recon work</em>. For Peter and Charlotte, trying to gather enough to prove no one knew of what happened to her mom.</p><p>A girl broken in all the right places, scraping up affection, starved for consideration, easy to manipulate and lie to, too strange to bother noticing it in others. A girl brimming over with determination to live who threw herself at him and who he could eat up slowly. He could drain her dry, daily, without breaking her skin, and still be provided with an overflowing feast, a different dish to a different kind of monster. Mary-Alice Brandon with her cheerfulness, entreating smiles, persisting exuberance.</p><p>She has a bad track record for hurting herself, letting others do it, giving seconds chances, accepting scraps of apologies like genuine repentance—bleed, rinse, repeat, bleed, rinse, repeat. She is the one who called her dad first, once she had a new life and a bunch of short-term goals and proposed that they talk. She does that with friends, lovers, acquaintances, family, close and extended.</p><p>Her rage bakes her for days on end. She doesn't talk to him, doesn't ask why they're staying at a shady motel in the middle of nowhere, where they're going next. He tastes her bitterness as she lets herself slosh over with her pain and send it all back at him, an attempt at hurting like she's been hurt. Grief, self-depreciation, shame, betrayal, guilt—most of all.</p><p>He doesn't understand that, although she imagines it's something he's well acquitted with. Her guilt over trusting—and loving—him, someone who was too close to being involved in her mom's death, over killing her dad, and not doing it soon enough to stop him from killing her mom, her guilt over Cynthia, Cynthia with her short life and her inheritance, who will be living with a hawk-like step-mom, who Mary-Alice is not sure will be treated right, and finally, over Jasper. He is puzzled by that. She doesn't know how his 'gift' works, exactly, but she is sure he can pick up on this. It's confusing for her as well, the combination of resentment and remorse but still, she doesn’t like hurting him, even when she does it daily. It's exhausting.</p><p>At some point she lets herself deflate, little by little, a process she offers no resistance to.</p><p>
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</p><p>She sits cross-legged, feet tucked behind her knees, his shirt loose and floppy around her, covering her from her shoulders down to her thighs. Mary-Alice shivers, lukewarm water dripping down her spine. She moves uncomfortably against the scratchy top blanket, teeth gritting.</p><p>She has no clean change of clothes, but breathing out his cloying scent is still unnerving. It trickles her memory. She keeps twitching, the curtains are shut and the lights are off save for one tiny bedside lamp that cast a dim glow over the papered walls.</p><p>She can barely make out what he's doing right now, darting around at an inhuman pace human he slowed only when he heard her breath hitching, felt her unease.</p><p>Something is wrong.</p><p>They are usually cautious, but not that much. She wonders what she will have to do to find out what's going on, if she can trust what he is going to answer. He lied to her for a long time. White lies, usually, graying by the end.</p><p>He counts blocks of money, takes portions of it, places the rest in a suitcase. He writes something in a pocketbook, rapid-fire, and tears down the page. She seizes her chance when she sees him putting his jacket on.</p><p>"What's wrong," she asks. Better do it now and get an answer or she will agonize over it while he's away. "Is it the police? Do they know where we are?"</p><p>"I wish," he says, sarcasm weaved through the last word.</p><p>Her irritation spikes. She sets her jaw, lips pursed out. Their unspoken reconciliation is tentative at best. She is still tense around him, resents him for his part in that mess.</p><p>"They could easily be dealt with," he amends. "Although that would attract too much attention. Rosalie is here. Whatever she wants to talk about must be important for her to leave Emmett."</p><p>He hedges toward the end of the bed and sits down, still at a safe distance. He reaches for her hand, ignoring her flooding adrenaline. His barely graze her fingertips.</p><p>"Your father was a powerful man. His death caused quite the stir, it could become a problem. If we get in their way, the Volturi will... intervene."</p><p>She has no illusions about her fate if that happens. She sees no way out of that. Except when she does. At night, she sees blood. It's all she sees since that day in the kitchen. Occasionally, it's nightmares, her dad's corpse bloated and rotting and accusing. More rarely, it is not dreams. She can tell them apart. It is becoming easier. Her perception adjusts to something else, eyes so much sharper. She is grounded when it happens, when she sees herself, dead but not gone, eyes red or golden, her bones steel-clad, thriving against all odds—</p><p>Everything is potent, vibrant to the point the colors appear throbbing. Being pulled back renders everything indistinct for minutes, the world seeming water-filtered. She passes her tongue over the roof of her mouth and visualizes a blur of could-be memories. The blood tasted like euphoria and grave dirt.</p><p>"We will talk later," he says and he's ducking through the door before she can come up with something to say with the click of a turning key.</p><p>She gets up and flips the chain lock close, out of habit, and considers what he left behind.</p><p>A letter carefully folded with J.Jenks’ name scrawled over it and, inside, instructions for her new identity and a curt reminder of his expectations. (Alice Whitlock. She fleetingly speculates at the last name. She doesn't know that name but a sense of recognition plummets in her gut, shock-like, and she wonders why it distresses her.)</p><p>Addresses, several, in Seattle, a restaurant and an office, in Forks, only one, and the name Carlisle Cullen.</p><p>A list of phone numbers on the ripped paper. Money, cash and credit cards, all neatly arranged.</p><p>He did not count on coming back.</p><p>The mattress is thin and the bedsprings poking. She yanks the bedsheet away. She is too tightly wound to sleep tonight, she will toss and turn until he's right beside her. She tries to focus and provokes the visions, an atypical aim seeing how she usually strives to keep them at bay.</p><p>She struggles and falls, blood drizzling from her mouth, body trashing as she gets close, something vile churning in her, an echo of agony, pain, her body writhing, her veins corroded, eyes she knows observing her, no longer red, a dull orange this time. Another echo, crashing gently, not from the future. <em>I would be anything for yo</em><em>u.</em></p><p>She sees them, her holding his hand—tugging him along, walking blithely the cobblestone alley of an old European city, her eyes scarlet, a phantom laugh ringing out, beautiful and abject, and a body thudding between them. Blood trickle down between their bodies and she relishes in the coursing taste.</p><p>She sees something else, someone. Her. Her neck snapped at a grotesque angle, open mouth and closed eyes, and a pyre next to her mangled body, four people she doesn't recognize cloaked in black, observing, impassive, hands clasped. No blood.</p><p>She sees nothing when she falls asleep, cheek smashed again the carpet. She smells smoke.</p><p>
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</p><p>She wakes up and pops in pain killers, twice the usual dose. She falls asleep once again and when she opens her eyes, dazed, it's nine a.m. She rolls over the carpet and wobbles up. Black spots obscure her eyes, her throat sore, blood caking her hair and chin.</p><p>Jasper is still not back. But he will be. Her future changes and meld but he is always in it, a definite fixture. It has been bruised into her bones, charred and permanent. Her decisions will not matter when it comes to him. It's freeing, in a way. If she has no control over it then she has nothing to accept because she has no choice.</p><p>Over the next hours, Mary-Alice paces, walks until her feet ache. She lets herself tumble against the mattress. She encounters an unwavering wall when she tries to see anything else. Everything is black now, silent and odorless as well, a sinkhole of pain that jolts her, her hands holding her head as she curls up. Better not try again.</p><p>It's a long time before the doorknob twist. She unthinkingly scrambles to the door. She thinks better of it at the last moment and waits for him to enter the tiny dust-capped motel room. He pretends he didn't hear the rustle of movements on the other side.</p><p>She pats the spot next to her, her motion hesitant.</p><p>
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</p><p>(The knife was a cleaver, huge and heavy, its wide blade sharp, positioned next to the breadbasket and butter.</p><p>She lunged.).</p><p>
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</p><p>The heat is getting milder and she rolls down the windows, the AC turned off. She closes her eyes, head lolling contentedly, the morning air stroking her face, ruffling her hair. She never did well caged in enclosed spaces.</p><p>She risks a glance at the rearview, her good mood crumbling, the sting of loss landing as she looks at her face, sunken cheeks and fake auburn hair, split ends haphazardly cut, slanted different edges. She touches it, one side, just above her ear, and winces. She's lost weight, despite the snacks and processed food she eats, stopping at rest stop dinner only when they are sure they are not followed—or <em>he</em> is sure, anyway.</p><p>For all her visions, she still has to rely on him to inform her, the answers short and fragmented. So she has to listen and carefully pay attention and piece the information together. Something happened and he still won't tell her what exactly. It grates on her nerves and she is oddly satisfied he can feel it.</p><p><em>What are you afraid of?</em> Jasper asked at that small dinner, the last time they were at one, standing on the other side of the booth, long legs extended over the checkered floor.</p><p>Her fingers were convulsively drumming against the sticky table. She looked at him then, bathed in the sunless morning light, golden hair and white skin, waiting with cadaveric immobility, looking at her with fresh, bright red eyes.</p><p>She pondered over all those months spent with him, how he fooled her, and concluded that he was wrong before, when he said he couldn't pretend he was a human, that it had been too late for him when Carlisle found and accepted him into his family. He played the part quite well.</p><p>She jammed her fork into her strawberry pie. She didn't reply. He watched her finish her pie and didn't insist.</p><p><em>I liked my life</em>, she said, thinking about her degree, her friend, her classes. <em>It was nice. I was happy. I wanted that.</em></p><p>It was early morning, summer rain rumbling down, and most people were at work, a man was drinking coffee in a corner and eating scrambled legs, the waitress was wiping the counter with a rag, lazily, headphones plugged in. No one was listening in on them but she knew he chooses his next words very carefully when he said, <em>You can't go back to that. Even if you don't want to be changed. You will have to go into hiding.</em> She dropped her eyes to her napkin.</p><p>She does reply now, says one name, "Cynthia."</p><p>He nods, sympathetic, and he waits. She takes a steadying breath and barricades the string of snapping images superimposing over what is happening. It's getting harder by the day.</p><p>"I miss my sister. I don't want her to grow up hating me."</p><p>That's already too late for that but she isn't ready to burn that bridge yet.</p><p>Mary-Alice keeps making lies in her head where one day she finds her and explains everything. It is all wishfully thinking but it's creeping through her inertia. She never sees Cynthia in her visions and it terrifies her.</p><p>"You don't want to involve her in our world," Jasper says, his voice breathing up cold anger. She raises her eyebrows, although she is not on the receiving end of his temper. "You know what happens to them."</p><p><em>Why me then?</em>, she wants to ask, but it's unfair. She doesn't know what's wrong with her but what Jasper calls her gift would have crawled its way back into her life. It's what made her unnatural, unappealing to her own family. It's what made her grab that knife. His continued presence in her life probably saved her.</p><p>Her sister can live, and age, and die of old age, face wrinkled and bones frail, with grandchildren swarming around her after a lifetime of ups and downs. Mary-Alice will die.</p><p>(It will not be peaceful, not even when she will decide it. Broken neck, ripped heart, burned alive, buried alive, drowned, decapitated. She grew into a tired apathy for the violence awaiting. When she chooses to become like him, it's nothing less than torture, the second-long premonition endless as she lived with the acid of his venom. Death or death. She only has to choose she wants to it to be definitive or not.)</p><p>
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</p><p>She kisses him, legs parted, bent at the knee, hanging from the bed, dangling from it. She pushes down the shoulder strap of her dress and laughs. She meets his gaze and cants her hips until he is so close she feels the ridges of his body.</p><p>He brings his hand to her throat, thumb pressing down over the bite mark she will bear, always, the only one that ever graced her skin, and his fingers curl around her neck.</p><p>Her dress, pale yellow, chiffon and lace, is filthy, soaked red. Thier eyes glint with shared blood. When she mentions it, falsely casual, he crushes his mouth against her lips, kisses her with his tongue and teeth, a trace of a near-bite on her lips.</p><p>It stops.</p><p>She tips her head questioningly. His eyes are boring into hers, hovering above her face, he's holding himself with one arm, the other still clasping her neck.</p><p>He has not decided what he wants to tell her and she glowers up at him. She hates being left in the dark. She pauses in surprise when she sees it. <em>You will hate me for this one day</em>, he says, a duplicate of what she's already heard. His mind is controlled around her whenever he tries to hide something, his technique perfected after years spent around a mindreader, and his immediate next actions are clouded.</p><p>He sees to it that he never makes any decision about his soon-to-be admission but she catches something faint anyway, his voice, strife with regret and shame, telling her, <em>I should have tried harder to help you with your </em><em>bloodlust</em><em>. You will regret </em><em>this</em><em> one day</em>.</p><p>Alice shakes her head. <em>No</em>, she says, his displeasure brushing her in mild annoyance. He does so hate when she replies to things he did not intend to tell her. But his own gift is inconvenient, her emotions exposed whenever he wants. Or not. <em>Those are your fears, not mine</em>, she mutters. <em>Maybe you will regret this but I won't. I choose this. </em></p><p>Maybe she wouldn't have if her mind had been wiped off and she truly had been reborn again with a clean past but Jasper noticed her lapses of memory and was quick to change her. She had to live with her loss and filled the void with blood. It was readily accessible unlike what she really wanted and she gave in to the hunger, the rhythm of heartbeats speeding up and muffling her harrowing pain. It breeds the worst kind of killing, cold corpses unrecognizable, flesh eaten in parts.</p><p>He can pretend he is not enjoying it but she knows better. It's only the aftermath he dreads, his years with his adoptive family an everlasting influence, his guilt rending him. His gift is unrelenting, making it impossible to ignore his natural empathy in self-interest like he did in his human days.</p><p>She was wrong to assume he only saw her as a pretty thing to prey upon when they meet. What she was to him is worse because she will never be that girl again, the personification of his longing for normality and peace, the kind he hadn't admitted to even himself but yearned for all the same, a girl who would soothe the worst of him with the best of her. She could have, almost did, the images of them with a golden-eyed family crisp, but then she didn’t want that—the restrain, the pain of thirst.</p><p>She sees him in her future, always, but she predicts he will leave, one day, won't stay with the husk of that woman he once loved for being the opposite of what she is now. <em>I would be anything for you</em>, he said but he already made that promise to someone else. Mary-Alice Brandon died in an abandoned house, looking at a family photograph on a mantelpiece and thinking of hers.</p><p>She holds his head to her naked chest sometimes, after the frenzy of blood and sex has passed and he is not quite with her anymore, body inflexible and mind absent, looking like their victims' corpses, and she caresses the curls at his nape and wonders if there will be one day when she will not anymore. His guilt is corporal. It stands between them, dwindling in-between the murders and coming back fiercely.</p><p>Tonight is not one of those nights, his guilt belongs to her only and she wishes she could rob it from him and hide it away.</p><p>He remarks what she feels at the moment, is quick to assert he will never leave. <em>I can't</em>, he says, almost hostile, frustration coloring his words. She understands. She can't, either. When she delved into that possible future, she only saw herself coming back, or him finding her, a following shadow anchored to her steps.</p><p>She finds no comfort in that. She still doesn’t like hurting him.</p><p>She kisses him, an apology. It's the gentlest kiss she has given him that night and she tries to remember tenderness when the blood she drank urges her to take and possess. She is shrouded by an acknowledging warmth coming from him, his gift tuned to every friction coursing inside her.</p><p>They leave the next morning on a flight to Germany. Italy is beautiful but even with precautions their lifestyle is too noticeable and they have no intention of giving anyone a reason to report them.</p><p>They are still on that trip that started decades ago, running away.</p>
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